Up bright and early, brimming with plans, prospects, and mad dashes for hope and the future. The thing about cabins is that although they may be made from trees, they do not grow on trees, at least not on the outskirts of Austin. All is not lost, however—there are some options out there, some of which, if not literally cabins, seem like they might be bearable until it makes more sense to sever myself from civilization in earnest (if this will ever make sense, that is).
Or maybe I’ll throw pragmatism out the window, hightail it to the Colorado mountains, and reenact The Shining. Again. Since this is what I more or less did in Boise, without the panoramic views or quality solitude.
We shall see.
The thing about seeking things (which I believe is the root of travel: to seek out new places, experiences, people, ways of seeing the world) is that the search puts you in touch with the Longing For Things, whether that be solitude, or love, or connection, or peace and quiet, or purpose, or, or, or…the way that the smell of food seems to make people hungry (I wouldn’t know—as Li says, my ole factory is shut down). There’s something to be said for being put in direct, visceral contact with the Longing for Things: for the process of trying to meet these needs and for the simultaneous awareness that often—almost always?—it is the Longing and corresponding search that are the pleasure and point of it all.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, the journey is the destination, man.
And all of that.
In other news, Meep has become a regrettably picky eater, eschewing various flavors of wet food without any discernible pattern (on the blacklist are the chunky salmon Fancy Feast that comes in the lime green can and a certain stripe of Friskies’ seafood pate—Mariner’s Choice, I think? Or maybe it’s Mariner’s Catch). Well, she has a right to have preferences, I thought, and tried to accommodate them by whisking away the offending flavor and replacing it with a more acceptable variety.
The problem is that I only use half a can per serving and she refuses to eat leftovers, either cold or reheated to room temperature in the microwave. Plus, I still have the offending flavors to use up, which is fine, because Spartacus has absolutely no reservations about any flavor of wet food, fresh, leftover, cold, or at room temperature; his only qualms lie in the fact that there is never, ever ENOUGH of it, EVER. But, since Sparty only gets a half-can of food per meal as well, and since I have been busting out two separate flavors per meal, trying to accommodate Meep’s aversion to certain flavors AND to leftovers, half-can after half-can of wet cat food have been accruing in plastic zipper bags in my refrigerator, which is becoming cluttered and unappetizing. I finally had to put my foot down this morning; when she refused heated-to-room-temperature leftovers of a flavor that yesterday had been perfectly acceptable, I had to say “this isn’t a restaurant, Little Missy” and direct her to the kibble, my Guilty Single Mother complex burning a hole in my conscience all the while.
I think I have a better inkling now of what my poor parents went through with my own picky eating tendencies.
Also, look! Since this post has devolved into still more musings of a Crazy Cat Lady, here’s Sparty enjoying his Christmas present from his Aunt Amy! Thank you, Aunt Amy!
The mighty hunter stalks his prey.
At this point, Meep had become the prey (again).
